Monday, October 19, 2015

Canada: "We are producing the (geothermal) energy, we’re just not doing anything with it".

Alberta, B.C. and Saskatchewan are sitting on a wealth of free, green energy. So why is nobody doing anything about it?

We are already in the top – maybe the top five – producers of geothermal energy in the world.”

Strange words when you consider that Alberta has never produced a megawatt of geothermal. Alison Thompson, co-founder of the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association (CANGEA), sounds exasperated trying to explain the fact. “We are producing the energy, we’re just not doing anything with it,” she says. “It’s like a nuclear plant or a coal plant spinning the electrical generator but you didn’t connect it to the grid.”

“We don’t have a geothermal industry in Alberta for the most part,” says Craig Dunn, chief geologist of Calgary-based Borealis GeoPower, all of whose projects are outside of Alberta. “We have people in the industry who are excited and opportunistic about what could be, but we are currently at zero megawatts of production.”